Denialism

In the psychology of human behavior, denialism is a person's choice to deny reality, as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth.[1] Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of an historical experience or event, by the person refusing to accept an empirically verifiable reality.[2] In the sciences, denialism is the rejection of basic facts and concepts that are undisputed, well-supported parts of the scientific consensus on a subject, in favor of radical and controversial ideas.[3] The terms Holocaust denialism and AIDS denialism describe the denial of the facts and the reality of the subject matters,[4] and the term climate change denialist is applied to people who argue against the scientific consensus that the global warming of planet Earth is a real and occurring event primarily caused by human activity.[5] The forms of denialism present the common feature of the person rejecting overwhelming evidence and the generation of political controversy with attempts to deny the existence of consensus.[6][7] The motivations and causes of denialism include religion and self-interest (economic, political, financial) and defence mechanisms meant to protect the psyche of the denialist against mentally disturbing facts and ideas.[8][9]

Orthodoxy and heterodoxy

Anthropologist Didier Fassin distinguishes between denial, defined as "the empirical observation that reality and truth are being denied", and denialism, which he defines as "an ideological position whereby one systematically reacts by refusing reality and truth".[10]

Then there are those who engage in denialist tactics because they are protecting some "overvalued idea" which is critical to their identity. Since legitimate dialogue is not a valid option for those who are interested in protecting bigoted or unreasonable ideas from scientific facts, their only recourse is to use these types of rhetorical tactics.[11]

In a 2003 newspaper article, Edwin Cameron—a senior South African judge who has AIDS—described the tactics used by those who deny the Holocaust and by those who deny that the AIDS pandemic is due to infection with HIV. He states that "For denialists, the facts are unacceptable. They engage in radical controversion, for ideological purposes, of facts that, by and large, are accepted by almost all experts and lay persons as having been established on the basis of overwhelming evidence".[12] To do this they employ "distortions, half-truths, misrepresentation of their opponents' positions and expedient shifts of premises and logic."[12] Edwin Cameron notes that a common tactic used by denialists is to "make great play of the inescapable indeterminacy of figures and statistics",[12] as scientific studies of many areas rely on probability analysis of sets of data, and in historical studies the precise numbers of victims and other facts may not be available in the primary sources.

Reputable and professional historians do not suppress parts of quotations from documents that go against their own case, but take them into account, and, if necessary, amend their own case, accordingly. They do not present, as genuine, documents which they know to be forged just because these forgeries happen to back up what they are saying. They do not invent ingenious, but implausible, and utterly unsupported reasons for distrusting genuine documents, because these documents run counter to their arguments; again, they amend their arguments, if this is the case, or, indeed, abandon them altogether. They do not consciously attribute their own conclusions to books and other sources, which, in fact, on closer inspection, actually say the opposite. They do not eagerly seek out the highest possible figures in a series of statistics, independently of their reliability, or otherwise, simply because they want, for whatever reason, to maximize the figure in question, but rather, they assess all the available figures, as impartially as possible, in order to arrive at a number that will withstand the critical scrutiny of others. They do not knowingly mistranslate sources in foreign languages in order to make them more serviceable to themselves. They do not willfully invent words, phrases, quotations, incidents and events, for which there is no historical evidence, in order to make their arguments more plausible.[14]

Mark Hoofnagle (brother of Chris Hoofnagle) has described denialism as "the employment of rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is none".[6][7][lower-alpha 1] It is a process that operates by employing one or more of the following five tactics in order to maintain the appearance of legitimate controversy:[15]

Conspiracy theories — Dismissing the data or observation by suggesting opponents are involved in "a conspiracy to suppress the truth".

Cherry picking — Selecting an anomalous critical paper supporting their idea, or using outdated, flawed, and discredited papers in order to make their opponents look as though they base their ideas on weak research.

False experts — Paying an expert in the field, or another field, to lend supporting evidence or credibility.

Moving the goalpost — Dismissing evidence presented in response to a specific claim by continually demanding some other (often unfulfillable) piece of evidence.

Tara Smith of the University of Iowa also stated that moving goalposts, conspiracy theories, and cherry-picking evidence are general characteristics of denialist arguments, but went on to note that these groups spend the "majority of their efforts critiquing the mainstream theory" in an apparent belief that if they manage to discredit the mainstream view, their own "unproven ideas will fill the void".[16]

In 2009 author Michael Specter defined group denialism as "when an entire segment of society, often struggling with the trauma of change, turns away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie".[17]

Prescriptive and polemic

If one party to a debate accuses the other of denialism they are framing the debate. This is because denialism is both prescriptive—it carries implications that there is a truth that the other side denies—and polemic—since the accuser usually goes on to explain how the other party is denying the asserted truth and as such the other party is in the wrong, which leads to an implied accusation that if the accused party persist with the denial despite the evidence their motives must be base.[10]

Some people have suggested that because denial of the Holocaust is well known, advocates who use the term in other areas of debate may intentionally or unintentionally imply that their opponents are little better than holocaust deniers. For example, in an essay discussing the general importance of skepticism, Clive James objected to the use of the word denialist to describe climate change skeptics, stating that it "calls up the spectacle of a fanatic denying the Holocaust";[18] and Celia Farber has objected to the term AIDS denialists, arguing that it is unjustifiable to place this belief on the same moral level with the Nazi crimes against humanity.[19] However, Robert Galloet al. defended this latter comparison, stating that AIDS denialism is similar to Holocaust denial since it is a form of pseudoscience that "contradicts an immense body of research".[20]

Edward Skidelsky, a lecturer in philosophy at Exeter University, has suggested that this is a new use for the word denial and it may have its origins in an old sense of "deny", akin to "disown" (as in the Apostle Peterdenying Christ), but that its more immediate antecedence is from the Freudian sense of deny as a refusal to accept a painful or humiliating truth. He writes that "An accusation of 'denial' is serious, suggesting either deliberate dishonesty or self-deception. The thing being denied is, by implication, so obviously true that the denier must be driven by perversity, malice or wilful blindness." He suggests that, by the introduction of the denier tag into further areas of historical and scientific debate, "One of the great achievements of The Enlightenment—the liberation of historical and scientific enquiry from dogma—is quietly being reversed", and that this should worry liberal-minded people.[21]

Examples of use

AIDS

AIDS denialism is the denial that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).[22] AIDS denialism has been described as being "among the most vocal anti-science denial movements".[23] Some denialists reject the existence of HIV, while others accept that the virus exists but say that it is a harmless passenger virus and not the cause of AIDS. Insofar as denialists acknowledge AIDS as a real disease, they attribute it to some combination of recreational drug use, malnutrition, poor sanitation, and side effects of antiretroviral medication, rather than infection with HIV. However, the evidence that HIV causes AIDS is scientifically conclusive[24][25] and the scientific community rejects and ignores AIDS-denialist claims as based on faulty reasoning, cherry picking, and misrepresentation of mainly outdated scientific data.[lower-alpha 2] With the rejection of these arguments by the scientific community, AIDS-denialist material is now spread mainly through the Internet.[26]

Thabo Mbeki, former president of South Africa, embraced AIDS denialism, proclaiming that AIDS was primarily caused by poverty. About 365,000 people died from AIDS during his presidency; it is estimated that around 343,000 premature deaths could have been prevented if proper treatment had been available.[27][28]

Climate change

Some international corporations, such as ExxonMobil, have contributed to "fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies" that claim that the science of global warming is inconclusive, according to a criticism by George Monbiot.[9] ExxonMobil did not deny making the financial contributions, but its spokesman stated that the company's financial support for scientific reports did not mean it influenced the outcome of those studies. "The recycling of this type of discredited conspiracy theory diverts attention from the real challenge at hand: how to provide the energy needed to improve global living standards while also reducinggreenhouse gas emissions."[29]Newsweek[30] and Mother Jones[31] have published articles stating corporations are funding the "denial industry".

In the context of consumer protection, denialism has been defined as "the use of rhetorical techniques and predictable tactics to erect barriers to debate and consideration of any type of reform, regardless of the facts."[32] The Bush Administration's replacement of previous science advisers with industry experts or scientists tied to industry, and its refusal to submit the Kyoto Protocol for ratification due to uncertainties they asserted were present in the climate change issue, have been cited by the press as examples of politically motivated denialism.[30][33][34]

Notes

↑"AIDS denialism is one of several incarnations of denialism. All denialism is defined by rhetorical tactics designed to give the impression of a legitimate debate among experts when in fact there is none. Holocaust deniers claim that historians disagree about the evidence for Nazi mass gassings and systematic murder of Jews. Global warming denialists say that climatologists are torn by the evidence about climate change. 9/11 'Truth Seekers' , as clever a piece of branding as 'pro-life', say the collapse of the Twin Towers resulted from controlled demolition. Vaccine hysterics tell us that the science is split on whether vaccinations cause autism. And AIDS denialists say that scientists are in disagreement about whether HIV causes AIDS" (Kalichman 2009).

↑To support their ideas, some AIDS denialists have also misappropriated a scientific review in Nature Medicine which opens with this reasonable statement: "Despite considerable advances in HIV science in the past 20 years, the reason why HIV-1 infection is pathogenic is still debated" (Borowski 2006, p. 369).